Peter Schwartz (futurist)

Peter Schwartz (1946 - ) is a futurist, author, and cofounder of Global Business Network, a corporate strategy firm based in San Francisco, California.

Personal history

Peter was in born in 1946 to Klara and Benjamin Schwartz, Hungarian Jews who had been in concentration camps and were living in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany.cite web|url=http://www.rpi.edu/dept/NewsComm/Magazine/dec99/visionary1.html|title=2020 Visionary|last=Knight|first=Margaret|date=1999|publisher=Rensselaer Alumni Magazine|accessdate=2008-09-10] The family soon moved to Norway, where they lived until Peter was five. At this point, they emigrated to America, and found a new home in Camden, New Jersey. Peter grew up there, attending school with such future stars as Steven Spielberg. He won a National Merit scholarship, and was able to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on full scholarship.

After graduating in 1968 with a B.S. in aeronautical engineering, Peter taught high school in Philadelphia and worked in the innovative student housing program at UC Davis. In 1972 he became an employee at the Stanford Research Institute, where he began to develop his unique method of scenario planning, and rose to director of the Strategic Environment Center. In 1982, he moved to London to work for Royal Dutch Shell as head of scenario planning. In 1985, while giving a speech at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of UC Berkeley, he met his future wife, Cathleen Gross. He moved to live with her in Berkeley, California in 1987, and they bought a house together and were married, and had one son, Benjamin, born in 1990.

Writings

Peter has written several books, on a variety of future-oriented topics. His first book was "The Art of the Long View" (Doubleday, 1991) is considered by many to be the seminal publication on scenario planning, and is used as a textbook by many business schools. "Inevitable Surprises" (Gotham, 2003) is a look at the forces at play in today's world, and how they will continue to affect the world. He also wrote "The Long Boom" (Perseus, 1999) with co-authors Peter Leyden and Joel Hyatt, which is a book about the future of the global economy. His book "When Good Companies Do Bad Things" (Wiley, 1999), is an argument for corporate responsibility in an age of corruption. "China's Futures" (Jossey-Bass, 2001), is a vision of several different potential futures for China. ", He also co-authored the Pentagon's "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security".

He has also worked as a consultant on several movies, including "Minority Report", "Deep Impact", "Sneakers", and "WarGames". He serves on the board of directors for the Long Now Foundation. [cite web|url=http://www.longnow.org/people/board/schwartz.php|title=Peter Schwartz|publisher=The Long Now Foundation|accessdate=2008-09-10] In 2007, Schwartz moderated a forum titled "The Impact of Web 2.0 and Emerging Social Network Models" as part of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Global Business Network

Peter founded GBN in 1988 in his Berkeley basement with several close friends including Stewart Brand, Napier Collyns, and Jay Ogilvy. Schwartz called GBN an “information hunting and gathering company”, and describes it as a high level networking and corporate research agency. In 2001, it was bought by the Monitor Group, though it continues to operate as a separate entity.

References